M97 (Dan Kusz) - AstroBin

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: HD97302 · M 97 · NGC 3587 · Owl Nebula · PK148+57.1

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M97

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M97

Messier 97, also known as the Owl Nebula, is a planetary nebula in the Ursa Major constellation. Its ghostly, round appearance, punctuated by two dark "eyes", evokes an owl's face, hence its name. At 8,000 light-years away, it offers astronomers insight into the death of Sun-like stars.

This image was a lesson in too much of a good thing can end in disappointment. My original goal of this image was to take long deep exposures in narrowband, especially OIII, to capture the outer OIII faint shell. This was the first time imaging this target and little did I know how bright it actually is. The target showed up very well in all 3 narrowband filters. I normally don't shoot SII for planetary nebula, but I did a test sub and the signal was strong, so I decided to go for it. I used 600 second subs, which in the end, was way too long! The finer detail was lost in the nebula due to the brightness of the image. The colour is a bit different as well with the incorporation of SII signal. I am a big advocate of long subs and many of them, but certain targets just don't need them. I wasn't going to toss this image because of the time spent acquiring the data. So here is the best I could do with the excessive and bright data.

Thanks for looking,
CS
Dan.

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7450651
PixInsight job	I5EM6KNAAB40NU1WAUUFIS4SOW82PK6L
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	11h14m39s.958
RA (top/left)	11h11m07s.741
RA (top/right)	11h18m53s.412
RA (bottom/right)	11h18m16s.837
RA (bottom/left)	11h10m22s.872

Dec (center)	+55°01′33″.20
Dec (top/left)	+54°35′21″.43
Dec (top/right)	+54°44′28″.98
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°27′22″.73
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°18′05″.13

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